AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL!

"America the Beautiful" was written by the professor, poet, and writer, Katharine Lee Bates in 1893. She wrote the song while on a trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado. When she got to the top of Pike's Peak, she said, "All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse". Her trip inspired her to write the poem.

Several of the sights on her trip found their way into her poem:

The World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the "White City" with its promise of the future contained within its alabaster buildings.

The wheat fields of Kansas, through which her train was riding on July 4.

The majestic view of the Great Plains from atop Pikes Peak.

The poem first appeared in print in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal, on July 4, 1895. Additional changes were made to the wording in 1904 and in 1913, to give us the version we know today.

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

O beautiful, for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.

O beautiful, for pilgrim feet
Whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw;
Confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law!

O beautiful, for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America! May God thy gold refine,
'Til all success be nobleness, and ev'ry gain divine!

O beautiful, for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years,
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea!

Vote. It's not just your privilege, it's your duty.

Vote as if you life depended on it,
for someday it may.

America is a great country, the land of the free
and the home of the brave.
Vote to keep it that way.

America is still the land of opportunity.
Vote to keep it that way.

Voting is still a private matter, so vote for who you
think is best qualified, not for who someone else
tells you to vote for.

MAIL POUCH TOBACCO BARNS

I think of our country as a museum for all to enjoy.

Everywhere you look there is something waiting to be observed and to learn from. Whether it is a carved rock on a hillside, beautiful herons, arrowheads left behind by Native Americans, or painted barns that are a colorful part of our landscape.

In 1890 the Bloch Brothers, owners of Mail Pouch Tobacco, decided to take their advertising to the outdoors.

They looked about and decided barns were the obvious location for advertising.

The farmers got a free paint job, sometimes a small cash settlement and free samples.

The barns were painted free hand. Harley Warrick was the most recognizable painter of the barns. By the time of his death in 2000 he had painted or repainted some 20,000 barns, give or take a few. He started painting for Mail Pouch fresh out of the army in 1946. He and a helper painted 2 barns a day, 6 days a week for a weekly salary of $32.

He helped to preserve and create a piece of vanishing Americana.

The slogan “Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco Treat Yourself to the Best” dominated barn sides until the 1960s, when the ban on tobacco ads and the 1965 Federal Highway Beautification Act, which prohibited advertising within 660 feet of federal highways, helped put a stop to the painting. The campaign officially ended in 1969.

In 1974 congress excluded “landmark signs adorning farm structures or natural surfaces, or of historic or artistic significance” from the 1965 law.

But, today the Mail Pouch Barns are becoming rare. Every year a few more succumb to the elements. They are made of fading paint and aged lumber and are slowly fading into America’s history.

Here is a barn located down the road from my house, I get to see this piece of Americana almost daily.

Here is a barn located on Rt. 2 going toward Pt. Pleasant, WV

There are many sites on the internet about the Mail Pouch Barns; here is one with lots of articles and pictures.

For more pictures of Mail Pouch Barns go to my other post here.

Are there any of these barns in your area?

Old House in the Countryside

My husband and I went to a few yard sales today.

One sale we visited was at a Civil War era house out in the country. We had been there before and I remember how I loved their old house. We had our camera today and when I asked her if I could take a picture, she said, "Why, yes you can take some pictures."

The house has only been deeded twice and the first family who owned it sided with the Confederates. In West Virginia it wasn't unusual for neighbors to be on different sides in the Civil War. She said the story goes that they hid their horses in the house whenever the Union forces were in the area. She also stated that one of the sons who lived there during the war had his legs broke because he would not fight.

The lady who lives there now with her husband is a very good painter. Many of her paintings hang on the walls inside their house. Here is a picture she painted of the homestead as it looked long ago. If you notice there was no road in the area then. She said the original owners had over 1000 acres.

Here is the front of the house as it looks now.

Here is another view of the house.

Here is the old bell that is original to the house. It now hangs on the upper back porch.


And I just couldn't resist taking a picture of this concrete pig in the back yard.

It is a lovely old house. She said when they used to have a garden she found many arrowheads in the tilled up ground which were left by even earlier inhabitants of the area. As you know by one of my earlier posts, I also have collected arrowheads from our garden area.

I love going to yard sales and meeting interesting people. Even though we were pressed for time today we found time to stand and talk and learn about a little piece of our area's past history...and make friends.